Not just for dummies; this is a must-read

This video series (7 parts) goes page-by-page of “Modern Money Mechanics,” a pamphlet by the Federal Reserve of Chicago, no longer in print but available on the internet, which describes “the basic process of money creation in a ‘fractional reserve’ banking system.

Such unbridled greed came close to bringing down the entire financial system, which American taxpayers have been allowed to pick up the bill for. After all this we see absolutely no regulation in sight and the SEC and the CFTC continue to protect the titans of Wall Street as government looks on in total disinterest. This, of course, omits the Executive Order borne criminality, which has turned our free markets into controlled and manipulated fascist markets. People say what can I do? You can start by throwing almost every incumbent out of office and buy pressing the Senate relentlessly to pass the bill that includes an audit and investigation of the Fed.

Backing up Blankfein’s plea of ignorance and incomprehension is this: The crisis killed Lehman Brothers and would have killed every one of them had not the Treasury and Fed, neither of which saw it coming, either, intervened with hundreds of billions in bailout cash. Yet there were those who warned a housing bubble was being created like the dot-com bubble; others who predicted the Empire of Debt was coming down. As, today, there are those warning that the United States, with consecutive deficits running 10 percent of gross domestic product, is risking an eventual default on its national debt.

Joseph Stiglitz understands half the US economic disaster when he explains current policy is “no way to run an economy that’s going to work,” “there’s moral hazard everywhere,” and newly-invented and unregulated financial markets have only increased risk, not decreased it.

Americans must prepare themselves for a massive collapse in the dollar as investors around the world dump their US assets, a former Bank of England policymaker has warned.

The United States faces projected 10-year federal budget deficits that seriously threaten its bond market, exchange rate, economy, and the economic future of every American worker and family. Those risks are exacerbated by the context of those deficits: a low household-savings rate, even after recent increases; large funding requirements for federal debt maturities every year; heavy overweighting of dollar-denominated assets in foreign portfolios; worsened fiscal prospects in the decades after the current 10-year budget period; and competing claims for capital to fund deficits in other countries.

Step 2: Bet against those same mortgage-related securities and make massive bets against the U.S. housing market so that your firm will make massive profits when the U.S. economy collapses.

Step 3: Have ex-Goldman executives in key positions of power in the U.S. government so that bailout money can be funneled to entities such as AIG that Goldman has made these bets with so that they can get paid after they win their bets.

Step 4: Collect the profits – Goldman Sachs is having their “most successful year” and will end up reporting approximately $50 billion in revenue for 2009.

Telecoms firms have accused the Government of acting like the East German Stasi over plans to force them to store the details of every phone call for at least a year. Under the proposals, the details of every email sent and website visited will also be recorded to help the police and security services fight crime and terrorism.

Furious opposition MPs accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of muzzling the House of Commons after he moved for the second time in a little more than a year to suspend Parliament. Mired in controversy over an alleged cover-up on the torture of Afghan prisoners and eager to increase the Conservatives’ power in the Senate, the government is closing down Parliament until March 3, the Prime Minister’s Office said Wednesday.

Plans for a North America security perimeter might have seemed like a pipe dream just a short time ago, but it could become a reality sooner than one thinks. Some believe that a perimeter approach to security would be a more effective way of providing safety while ensuring the free flow of trade and investment. For those pushing for deep continental integration, this move is seen as the next logical step. A recent article from the Toronto Star, Canada warms to idea of a tougher ‘perimeter’ suggests that Canadians might now be ready to debate the concept of perimeter security. David Biette who specializes in U.S.-Canada relations and is a member of the Woodrow Wilson Center stated that a, “Perimeter is no longer a dirty word.

Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than two billion US dollars by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists have revealed.

In coming years, engineers say unmanned air, sea and ground vehicles will increasingly work together without any human involvement. Israel and the U.S. have already faced backlash over civilian deaths caused by drone-fired missiles in Gaza, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those ethical dilemmas could increase as robots become more independent of their human masters.

“If we resume testing, we’ll find that at least a third of all active police officers have some kind of mental pathology”

Michael Geist: “Negotiations in the 7th round of the ACTA [ed: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — a brutal, secret Internet treaty] talks open this morning in Mexico with civil enforcement issues on the agenda. Yesterday I posted on the developments to-date, including a chronology of talks, issues, and leaks that have led to this week’s round of discussions. Part Two of the ACTA Guide provides links to the underlying documentation. Governments have been very tight lipped about the talks. Initially, only a brief summary following the conclusion of each round of the talks was provided. More recently, the agenda of each meeting is disclosed and a summary document (largely confirming Internet leaks) has been provided. Of far greater importance are the leaked documents. These have confirmed how the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is designed to extend far beyond counterfeiting and how it would reshape domestic law in many countries.”

An Obama executive order that creates a council of state governors who will work with the feds to expand military involvement in domestic security has stoked fears that the administration is stepping up preparations for martial law.

The order, which is entitled Establishment of the Council of Governors (PDF), creates a body of ten state governors directly appointed by Obama who will work with the federal government to help advance the “synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States”.

The governors will liaise with officials from Northcom, Homeland Security, the National Guard as well as DoD officials from the Pentagon “in order to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State governments,” according to the executive order.

The Obama administration is lowering the volume in a long-running argument between Congress and the executive branch over when, if ever, a president has the power to bypass federal statutes he has signed into law. The administration will consider itself free to disregard new laws it considers unconstitutional, especially in cases where it has previously voiced objections elsewhere, White House officials said. The White House disclosed the shift when asked why it had not put out a signing statement last month, when Obama signed a $447 billion spending bill for 2010 that contained several provisions that restricted executive power in ways that the administration had previously asserted were unconstitutional.

Looks like the steadily growing list of constitutional, ethical and political outrages that constitute the Harry Reid version of Obamacare is sparking a rebellion in the states, as AP reports South Carolina’s attorney general plans to investigate the vote-buying that surrounded the proposal in the Senate majority leader’s office.

According to AP, South Carolina’s Henry McMaster is being joined by the attorneys general of Michigan and Washington state in a suit to determine the constitutionality of the Obamacare proposal. Their initiative was prompted by a request from South Carolina’s two senators, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint, both Republicans.

“The alarming upshot of the court’s decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week — just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans’ phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process — the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer.”

Plans for a North America security perimeter might have seemed like a pipe dream just a short time ago, but it could become a reality sooner than one thinks. Some believe that a perimeter approach to security would be a more effective way of providing safety while ensuring the free flow of trade and investment. For those pushing for deep continental integration, this move is seen as the next logical step. A recent article from the Toronto Star, Canada warms to idea of a tougher ‘perimeter’ suggests that Canadians might now be ready to debate the concept of perimeter security. David Biette who specializes in U.S.-Canada relations and is a member of the Woodrow Wilson Center stated that a, “Perimeter is no longer a dirty word.

Roger Tucker considers the linguistic root, visual representation, usage and practise of fascism, and examines the circumstances under which the concept, “which is neither good nor bad in itself”, becomes malevolent. To illustrate, he looks at two contemporary examples of fascism: the USA and Israel.

”Fascism … it is a social pathology and it can legitimately be considered humanity’s most urgent public health problem. If enough people come to understand what the disease is and how to diagnose it, perhaps there will emerge a means to inoculate ourselves. At this point American and Jewish fascism appear to have converged into an aggressive pathological force that endangers humanity more than any such phenomenon in the past.”

Joseph Stiglitz understands half the US economic disaster when he explains current policy is “no way to run an economy that’s going to work,” “there’s moral hazard everywhere,” and newly-invented and unregulated financial markets have only increased risk, not decreased it.

Michael Geist: “Negotiations in the 7th round of the ACTA [ed: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — a brutal, secret Internet treaty] talks open this morning in Mexico with civil enforcement issues on the agenda. Yesterday I posted on the developments to-date, including a chronology of talks, issues, and leaks that have led to this week’s round of discussions. Part Two of the ACTA Guide provides links to the underlying documentation. Governments have been very tight lipped about the talks. Initially, only a brief summary following the conclusion of each round of the talks was provided. More recently, the agenda of each meeting is disclosed and a summary document (largely confirming Internet leaks) has been provided. Of far greater importance are the leaked documents. These have confirmed how the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is designed to extend far beyond counterfeiting and how it would reshape domestic law in many countries.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is actively issuing directions banning private sales of guns without licenses at gun shows in Texas, despite there being no law to justify such demands.

According to an obscure report in the European Union Times (EUTimes.net), “Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued an order to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to ‘begin immediately’ increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation, over-hyped terrorism panics, and last year’s Big Pharma and media-engineered hysteria over the H1N1 flu pandemic, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11.

Among other things, the Executive Order (EO) established a Council of Governors, an “advisory panel” chosen by the President that will rubber-stamp long-sought-after Pentagon contingency plans to seize control of state National Guard forces in the event of a “national emergency.”

According to the White House press release, the ten member, bipartisan Council was created “to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards.”

“When appointed” the announcement continues, “the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.”

Clearly designed to weaken the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which bars the use of the military for civilian law enforcement, EO 13528 is the latest in a series of maneuvers by previous administrations to wrest control of armed forces historically under the democratic control of elected state officials, and a modicum of public accountability.

On Friday, President Obama signed a new war spending bill into law, but “not without taking a page from his predecessor and ignoring a few elements in the legislation,” the Hill reports.

The Obama administration announced in the statement it would disregard provisions of the legislation that, among other things, would compel the Obama administration to pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require the Treasury department to report to Congress on the activities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

First came the attempted launch in April. Then, last month, Pyongyang detonated a test nuclear device, which may or may not have worked as planned. Now the Norks are threatening to launch another Taepodong-2 missile, with a 4,000-mile range, towards Hawaii — and Gates is pulling out all the stops, to prepare for an intercept.

That means sending Army Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense missile systems, still in development, to the islands, and deploying the SBX radar. Joint Chiefs vice chairman General James Cartwright said he was “90-plus percent” sure the U.S. could intercept a Nork missile, in the unlikely event it overflew U.S. territory.

Humboldt County, California voters passed measures F and J last November prohibiting military recruiters from initiating contact with minors. Now the Obama administration is demanding that the law be overturned. A court hearing is scheduled for June 9 in Oakland, California. The measures which passed by a large margin allow recruitment to occur if the minor initiates contact. Federal government lawyers claim “irreparable harm” if the laws stand.

One in every 31 U.S. adults is in the corrections system, which includes jail, prison, probation and supervision, more than double the rate of a quarter century ago, according to a report released on Monday by the Pew Center on the States.

The study, which said the current rate compares to one in 77 in 1982, concluded that with declining resources, more emphasis should be put on community supervision, not jail or prison.

President Obama defended his recent decision to give the Federal Reserve expanded oversight powers over the nation’s biggest financial institutions, during an exclusive interview with CBS’ The Early Show. While his critics argue the Fed was partly responsible for letting reckless practices on Wall Street get out of control, the president disagreed. “It wasn’t the Fed,” Mr. Obama said.

Two people asked a Pentagon official cooperating with prosecutors in an investigation into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to fake his own death to avoid testifying against two pro-Israel lobbyists charged in the case, according to the Justice Department.

Objecting to the fact that 300 pages were added to the bill at 3 a.m., Minority leader John Boehner attempted a brief filibuster, giving time for colleagues and aides to scan the unread extra passages and present certain excerpts on the floor. Politico blasts his effort, reporting:

That wasn’t good enough for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who delayed the roll call vote by reading page-by-page through a 300-page managers’ amendment Democrats added at around 3 a.m. Friday. Boehner seemed to relish the hour-long stunt, picking out the bill’s most obscure language and then pontificating about what it might – or might not – mean.

There was no reason to pass Real ID, and there is no reason to enact a replacement after state legislatures shot REAL ID to pieces. Nothing has happened since 2005 to make the government more trustworthy or to make liberty less valuable. It is vital that we never permit our rulers to treat all Americans like criminal suspects all the time. The government’s incompetence at protecting Americans must not be converted into a political entitlement to destroy all privacy.

A corporation is not a person. It is an abstraction: an organizational structure that feels no remorse and has no morality, no life, no soul. Yet the modern corporation – still just an arbitrary legal entity – enjoys the same rights as you or I. It has the right to free speech, to own property, to lobby government officials and protect against self-incrimination.

“The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.”

2009 is not even half over, but it seems the forecasts made by both Estulin and Tucker based on their 2009 Bilderberg sources are already proving to be accurate. In a phone interview conducted as this year’s conference was getting underway in Greece, Daniel Estulin warned The Corbett Report that the powers that be were preparing to run up the stock market one final time in order to draw the masses back into investing before crashing the market. Now, a worrying new report suggests that this is precisely the case as corporate executives start ditching their stocks at a rate not seen in years.

Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate — and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.

Over the past several weeks, independent journalists and anti-war activists have tried to shine a spotlight on how groups like the Center for American Progress and MoveOn, which portrayed themselves as anti-war during the Bush-era, are now supporting the escalation and continuation of wars because their guy is now commander-in-chief. CAP has been actively pounding the pavement in support of the escalation in Afghanistan, the rebranding of the Iraq occupation and, more recently, Obama’s bloated military budget, which the group said was “on target.” MoveOn has been silent on the escalation in Afghanistan and has devoted substantial resources to promoting a federal budget that includes a $21 billion increase in military spending from the Bush-era.

After a soldier taped a psychologist saying he’d been pressured not to diagnose PTSD, the Army launched an investigation. Read the details of how the Army declared itself innocent.

America’s top spy agency has taken over the former Sony microchip plant and is transforming it into a new data-mining headquarters — oddly positioned directly across the street from a 24-hour Walmart — where billions of electronic communications will be sifted in the agency’s mission to identify terrorist threats.

Those in control of the Earth’s resources use the same methods of repression and control on each continent. We must stand in solidarity with one another, and focus on our commonalities rather than our differences, if we are to make true progress.

Robert Capa’s war pictures in sight and sound

“It does not make sense to “put into place regulations in Europe and the United States which are completely different. We should try to align them, and if possible not only in the United States and Europe but at the international level,” Verheugen said. Verheugen is the EU co-chair of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), a U.S.-EU government forum created two years ago with the goal of reducing regulatory barriers to trade between the world’s largest trading partners.”

Britain’s security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, under proposals being discussed in Whitehall.

The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.

Cossiga says Italian government should “do what I did” under Operation GLADIO – infiltrate protest groups with agent provocateurs

The letter dealt a potential blow to Italian prosecutors who are trying seven Italians and 26 Americans — the latter in absentia — for the alleged 2003 kidnap. They are accused of seizing a terrorism suspect, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, in broad daylight on the streets of Milan and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured and held for years without charge.

The drug-taking habits, sexual appetites and even the face lifts of some of France’s most senior politicians have been revealed in eye-watering detail after the secret notes of an intelligence chief were leaked.

ASIA, RUSSIA, INDIA, PAKISTAN

China is aggressively developing its power to wage cyber warfare and is now in a position to delay or disrupt the deployment of America’s military forces around the world, potentially giving it the upper hand in any conflict

The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days.

“The nearly three hundred page, ‘official use only’ packet from 2004, translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a division of the CIA, includes interviews with bin Laden from various news agencies and also includes messages he sent directly to the US from the periods of 1994 to 2004. One message includes bin Laden’s denial of having anything to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania.”

NORTH AMERICA

Interpol, which is based in France, announced Wednesday it is sending a team of investigators to Mexico to investigate the possibility that its communications systems and databases are not being used for legitimate law enforcement purposes. The prospect was raised after the arrest of the top official working with the agency in the country.

The report says the heavy restrictions on all major sectors of Gaza’s economy, compounded by a cost of living increase of at least 40 per cent, is causing “progressive deterioration in food security for up to 70 per cent of Gaza’s population”. That in turn is forcing people to cut household expenditures down to “survival levels”.

Bolivian President Evo Morales joins us in the firehouse studio to discuss the election of Barack Obama, US-Bolivian relations, the global economic crisis and more. Morales is visiting the United States at a time when relations between the two countries are deteriorating. Last month, the Bush administration suspended long-term trade benefits with Bolivia over its alleged failure to cooperate in the “war on drugs.” Meanwhile, Morales has given the Drug Enforcement Administration three months to leave Bolivia. He accused DEA agents of violating Bolivian sovereignty and encouraging the drug trade.

Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s leftwing president, has heightened fears that the Andean nation will default on parts of its $10bn foreign debt, saying an internal audit due this week will determine if the debt is “illegitimate”

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” – Jeannette Rankin

This is the first time I’ve been linked to this site. This is a very well written article, and I’m still delving into the links. I see myself spending quite a bit of time here in the future. (Link fixed)

New World Order: How Bretton Woods reshaped the world economy – BBC 11/14/08

Is an imperial presidency destroying what America stands for? Bill Moyers sits down with history and international relations expert and former US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich who identifies three major problems facing our democracy: the crises of economy, government and militarism, and calls for a redefinition of the American way of life

The letter dealt a potential blow to Italian prosecutors who are trying seven Italians and 26 Americans — the latter in absentia — for the alleged 2003 kidnap. They are accused of seizing a terrorism suspect, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, in broad daylight on the streets of Milan and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured and held for years without charge.

Japan has protested to the United States after a U.S. nuclear submarine made an unannounced visit to one of its ports Monday.

US EMPIRE & MILITARY STRATEGY

“According to reports out of top Chinese mainstream news outlets, the RAND Corporation recently presented a shocking proposal to the Pentagon in which it lobbied for a war to be started with a major foreign power in an attempt to stimulate the American economy and prevent a recession.”…”Reportedly, the RAND proposal brazenly urged that a new war could be launched to benefit the economy, but stressed that the target country would have to be a major influential power, and not a smaller country on the scale of Afghanistan or Iraq.”

Wikileaks has released a sensitive 219 page US military counterinsurgency manual. The manual, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004), may be critically described as “what we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places”. Its contents are both history defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, history making.

US WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY

In a dispassionate and scientific style, the seven hundred and one photographs inside the suitcase catalogued a city seared by a new form of warfare. The origin and purpose of the photographs were a mystery to the man who found them that night. Now, over sixty years after the bombing of Hiroshima, their story can be told.

“According to reports out of top Chinese mainstream news outlets, the RAND Corporation recently presented a shocking proposal to the Pentagon in which it lobbied for a war to be started with a major foreign power in an attempt to stimulate the American economy and prevent a recession.”…”Reportedly, the RAND proposal brazenly urged that a new war could be launched to benefit the economy, but stressed that the target country would have to be a major influential power, and not a smaller country on the scale of Afghanistan or Iraq.”

This week and into next, NorthCom and NORAD are conducting a joint exercise called “Vigilant Shield ’09.”

“In the next three years the military plans to activate and train an estimated 4,700 service members for specialized domestic operations, according to Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command, which was created in 2002 for homeland defense missions,” reports the Colorado Independent.

This was originally forbidden by what’s known by the Posse Comitatus Act, which maintained separations between police and military. This division was ended by the ‘John Warner Defense Authorization Act’ in 2006. Then, it was repealed in the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year of 2008. However, Bush issued a signing statement saying he didn’t feel bound by the repeal.

A 25-year fight to bring Jon Burge and detectives who tortured at least 150 black men into confession to justice reaches a crucial stage.

On the November 13 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, G. Gordon Liddy repeatedly advised people not to register their firearms, saying: “The first thing you do is, no matter what law they pass, do not — repeat, not — ever register any of your firearms.”